Mitzi Gaynor, the actor, singer and dancer who starred in 1950s Hollywood musicals as South Pacific Ocean And There’s no business like show business before she went on to conquer the stage and TV specials in Las Vegas, her management team announced today. She was 93.

“As we celebrate her legacy, we extend our gratitude to her friends and fans and the countless audiences she entertained throughout her long life,” Rene Reyes and Shane Rosamonda of Gaynor’s MGMT team said today in the statement honoring her announced death.

See the entire statement below.

The statement added: “We take great comfort in the fact that her creative legacy will continue through her many magical performances captured on film and video, through her recordings and, above all, through the love and support so generously shown by audiences around the world shared with her. her life and career. Please keep Mitzi in your thoughts and prayers.”

Born Francesca Marlene de Czanyi von Gerber in Chicago on September 4, 1931, Gaynor had risen to national fame in the early 1950s as the star of Hollywood’s new wave of musicals such as There’s no business like show business (1954), Everything is allowed (1956) with Bing Crosby and Donald O’Connor; And The girls (1957) with Gene Kelly.

Same year as The girlsGaynor was cast in one of her most memorable roles as the girlfriend of nightclub comedian Joe E Lewis (played by Frank Sinatra) in The Joker is wild.

But her signature role came in 1958 when she was cast as Nellie Forbush in the film adaptation of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific Ocean. In her Golden Globe-nominated performance, Gaynor was treated to one of the musical’s most popular numbers, “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair.”

By the end of the decade, Gaynor had also entered TV variety shows, and in 1968 she starred in her first NBC special called, simply: Mitzi. Gaynor and her show were so popular that she became a TV fixture in the 1970s, helming the annual variety specials on CBS from 1973 to 1978.

Gaynor made many guest appearances on other variety shows, perhaps most prominently on the February 16, 1964 episode of The Ed Sullivan Showwhich coincidentally also featured the second performance of The Beatles. During the episode, Gaynor, like the Beatles, performed from the stage of the Deauville Hotel in Miami Beach. Her nine-minute segment included her memorable performance of Cole Porter Too damn hot.

In addition to her TV career, Gaynor was an immensely popular nightclub and Vegas performer. Her Vegas breakthrough came in 1961 with her show at the Flamingo Hotel, which reportedly broke box office records and made Gaynor the city’s highest-paid female entertainer. She would remain a Vegas, nightclub and touring performer for most of her life, and her later career included a 2008-2011 tour called Mitzi… Razzle Dazzle! My life behind the sequins.

The PBS documentary was released in 2008 Mitzi Gaynor Razzle Dazzle: the special years highlighted her TV variety specials.

Gaynor married Jack Bean, the man who would be her husband and manager until his death in 2006. The couple had no children. Information about survivors was not immediately available.

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